George Bartram - Under the Freeze

The major came back and the car sagged under him. He slammed the door too hard and turned all the way around to look at them. “I think she’s left it with a man named Czerny. I didn’t see her do it; that’s a guess. Take your finder down there and you can check for sure. But I think it’s Czerny because I saw her coming from his stairway.”

“Who’s Czerny?” Tarp said.

“He’s supposed to be an artist. Actually, he runs a shop for people from the foreign embassies. In his apartment — food, textiles, fine wines — if you can pay his prices, and in Western currency, Czerny can get it for you.”

“It sounds illegal.”

“It is. But he has friends.”

“Like Mensenyi?”

“Yes, like Mensenyi.” Gorchakov looked into his eyes fora second. “Actually, Czerny performs a service of a sort. It’s a way of keeping an eye on a lot of foreigners.”

Tarp held his hand out toward Repin. “My turn,” he said. “They’ve seen you once.” He strolled down the street and in through the wrought-iron gates, walked around the spare, beautiful courtyard beyond it, and found a stairwell where the signal was strongest. On the second floor above, by a brass plate in a door marked Czerny, the signal was strongest of all. Tarp thought of going in, then thought better of it and went back to the car.

“It’s in Czerny’s all right. It’s a good drop. Somebody’ll come in to buy something, he’ll wrap the tube with it, and away it will go. Another cutout, is my guess. A foreigner this time.”

“Shall I pick up the woman?” Gorchakov said. “Falomin’s dolly?”

“Not yet.”

“Is it Falomin?” Gorchakov said. It was the first sign he had given that he knew the case in its details. Tarp and Repin both looked at him and then at each other, and he turned away, aware that he had overstepped a line.

“Well?” Tarp said.

Repin jabbed a finger at Gorchakov’s back. “There must be a tap on Czerny’s telephone.”

“What if there is?”

“He’ll make a call now that he has the tube. It has to be done that way. He’ll call; somebody will come and get it.”

“We’d never get it in time. Czerny’s low priority. It goes on tape, somebody types it up, next week it will be in a file someplace. It’s not a live tap.”

“We can go up,” Tarp said, “and stay out of sight in Czerny’s apartment.”

“No!” Repin was almost violent. “Maxudov will have him terrorized. Czerny will be more afraid of Maxudov than of us. He will give a signal. Mark me, Maxudov has something on him — a relative in the gulag, maybe. No. We do not show ourselves.”

Gorchakov got out and looked down the street and came back. “Maybe I can put the car in the courtyard just up the street. It’s the near of one of the embassies, but they’ll cooperate. Let me move the car and then I’ll see about leaving it.” He looked at Tarp. “It will cost some money.”

“That’s all right.”

They parked next to a steel trash container, a row of smaller trash bins at their rear bumper like guards. Repin complained that the black box’s signal was no good, but they were now in a place from which they could watch the approach to the gate.

Several cars passed along the narrow street. A few parked, but the black box did not respond, and they were sure the tube had not moved. In the dusk just after five o’clock, however, a small car pulled up opposite them and a man got out and hurried toward the gated courtyard.

“He looks like he needs the pissoir ,” Tarp said, using the French word.

“Maybe he’s the cutout.”

“And maybe he’s got a small bladder.”

But when the man came back the tube came with him. The black box’s whine changed to a groan and the numbers went up as he jumped into his car and flicked on the lights before starting the motor. Repin grinned. “He was nervous.” He laughed.

“Last lap?” Tarp said as Gorchakov started the car.

“Maybe. Maybe.” Repin laughed again and they pulled out into the street and saw the taillights of the other car disappearing around the curve. Gorchakov followed slowly and turned his own lights off as they topped a rise where they could have been seen from the other car. It was far ahead but moving slowly.

“Easy to follow,” Gorchakov said.

“Too easy?”

“No, he’s just being careful. It’s got diplomatic markings, that car. Italian. Your Maxudov has friends everywhere.”

Gorchakov gave an order on his radio and waited until another car pulled in behind them before he turned off on a cross street. They drove parallel to the other’s route for six blocks and then pulled in behind again and the other car turned off.

“He’s heading for the Kremlin,” Gorchakov said. He laughed nervously. “Maybe he’s going to deliver it by hand.”

Repin looked dyspeptically at Tarp.

“Maybe he’s going to give it to Comrade—” Gorchakov started to say.

“Shut up,” Repin growled.

Gorchakov shrugged himself deeper into his coat. He began to take his frustration out on the car, which seemed to find more bumps now. It was almost dark. Steering too fast around a corner, Gorchakov almost missed seeing a drunk who stepped into his path; both Tarp and Repin cried out, and the major wrenched the wheel just in time to miss the shambling figure.

“His own fault!” Gorchakov shouted. “It would have been his fault if I’d killed him! These pieces of excrement that infest the streets, they keep the government liquor industry in business and they’re the shame of our society! It would have been better if I’d killed him, the—”

“Shut up,” Repin muttered.

“I didn’t see him!” Gorchakov said sharply. “He could have ruined everything.”

“Exactly.”

After that, Gorchakov drove more slowly. Tarp thought they had lost the other car, but the major somehow kept it in sight in spite of the drunk and his own anger, and he almost got too close to it as it dawdled along by a crowded sidewalk. They were two lanes over but almost abreast, and Tarp saw the driver in silhouette, gripping the wheel very tightly and sitting up straight. Nervous . Really nervous . The man did not look at them. He was more worried about where he was going than who might also be going there.

His destination was Red Square. He had not gone to it by a direct route, no doubt because he had been told to drive randomly. Still, the vast open space was certainly where he had been heading. So now he must feel better . The square looked cold, like the icefields over which the winds blew without regard to spring. There was little movement now — cars, a trickle of pedestrians near St. Basil’s. Far away down the square, a row of huge banners were lighted with spotlights, yet from this distance they seemed too small to be read.

“What a place,” Gorchakov groaned.

“Daring,” Repin said. Red Square was a good place to sell dollars or blue jeans, but it did seem a remarkable place for this sort of operation. “Well, we wait.” Repin was still watching the diplomatic car’s lights by the Kremlin wall.

“I can’t wait here very long,” Gorchakov said.

“Turn off your lights.”

“The Moscow police watch the square all the time now. I don’t have an arrangement with them for this business.”

“I will take care of the Moscow police. Turn off your lights!”

Repin fiddled with the black box. The signal was strong, and when the other car pulled away from the wall, there was no doubt that the tube had been left behind.

“In the wall?” Tarp said.

“Probably. Too dark to see.”

“I can’t stay here,” Gorchakov said.

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I cannot!”